Thread: The 2009 Blueberry Fiasco in Sweden

The 2009 Blueberry Fiasco in Sweden on Vimeo

35 min video on berrypicking in Sweden, and scammers in Thailand

That really is quite upsetting.

I seem to remember the Swedish government wanting order in this mess, and demanding, that the pickers get a minimum monthly pay of around 50000 baht exl expenses.
The pickers can still get screwed in Thailand though.

This is [unsurprisingly] not a new problem.

Berry picking all time high this summer

02.06.2004 | news Christer Nilsson


......

“And for those who like to come and pick wild berries does the Swedish migration board, Miv, cooperate with the association of wild berry trade, SBIF, which has undertaken the social and economic responsibility for people invited to work by companies approved by SBIF,” says Ms Gunilla Wikström, at Miv´s department for approvals, to scandasia. The cooperation between SBIF and Miv was introduced a few years ago to prevent new cases with fraud and harassment of Thai berry pickers in Sweden. A large number of Thai berry pickers were scammed in Sweden and Thailand during the year 2000 season.

ScandAsia.Com - Berry picking all time high this summer

What really surprises me though is that they get visas.

If a Thai walks into the Swedish embassy and asks for a tourist visa for picking berries [or even just to visit a friend] with an invitation to stay, do they just get a visa???

If the visa is only forthcoming if trip is arranged at 100k cost through an agent then it's Sweden that has questions to answer.

Originally Posted by NLo

What really surprises me though is that they get visas.

If a Thai walks into the Swedish embassy and asks for a tourist visa for picking berries [or even just to visit a friend] with an invitation to stay, do they just get a visa???

If the visa is only forthcoming if trip is arranged at 100k cost through an agent then it's Sweden that has questions to answer.

You are not allowed to work holding a tourist visa*. A Thai citizen would need to show sufficient funds and an insurance policy covering them for their stay. Failing that a Swedish citizen or resident would have to sponsor the person and show sufficient resources to financially support the person during said stay.

A work permit is much harder to obtain and hardly something a poor Thai farmer could negotiate him/herself. As was mentioned in the film Swedes married to Thais had helped arrange things in the past. There after agencies have come in seeing a chance to both hoodwink the workers and to a lesser extent the Swedish authorities.

Of course the Swedish authorities have greatly over estimated the amount of permits that were issued and been very naive. It's tragic that something that worked so well on a smaller scale for several years has ended up in the hands of corruptive elements. We can only hope that this year things will work out better.

I'm in Stockholm and I remember a scandal surrounding this last year but not the details. I will dig around through the reports and if I find something of value I'll re-post. I'll also watch out for news from the forthcoming season and report back if if there is anything of interest.

*Schengen tourist visa in this case which is the same visa for most EU member states I think only the UK and Ireland are outside it.

Anywhere else to download this....does not seem to download for me from this site.

Cannot find on youtube either...

This years berry picking doesn't seem to have got off to a good start either. In this instance it's Chinese pickers that seem to be taking the brunt of corruption. In the link there are sub links to other reports highlighting Vietnamese pickers and their plight.

In the Swedish language reports that I have read and heard the Chinese firstly signed a Swedish trade union minimum wage guarantee only to have Chinese work leaders producing another document imploring the pickers to waive the Swedes proposal and to instead sign a piece work contract allowing them to supposedly earn more. You can guess that most went along and signed up for the piece work. Haven't heard much about Thai pickers hopefully they are fairing better this year.

Chinese berry pickers march in protest - The Local

FIVE Vietnamese workers hired to pick berries in Sweden have been arrested for allegedly assaulting and locking up their supervisors in a dispute over pay. It was the most serious in a string of labour squabbles involving Asian berry pickers who say they have been lured to Sweden on false premises.

Police in Dalarna province say the men were detained yesterday on suspicion of assault, kidnapping and illegal threats.

Police spokesman Sten Sabel said overnight they led a revolt at a former school where nearly 300 Vietnamese berry pickers are staying.

He said the managers, who are also Vietnamese, were assaulted and locked up in the basement.

Each summer,......................

Workers arrested in berry revolt | Courier Mail

Is Utah in Sweden or is Sweden in Utah? Maybe Taiwan?
Poor folks getting ripped off by their own.

COMMENTARY: Berry picking - the darker side
Jussi Konttinen



In July a man full of hope arrived in Finland.

The Thai citizen planned to spend the summer picking berries in the swamps and forests of Finnish Lapland.

The cloudberry crop looked good. In the autumn he would return home, having earned a handsome amount of money.

Things went differently. The 38-year-old man disappeared in Salla and was found a couple of weeks later dead in the forest. His body apparently bore damage caused by animals, which could have been inflicted after his death.

The investigation into the death continues. No crime is believed to be involved, and the man probably would have wanted to continue his life.

The use of Thai berry pickers has been known for years to be something akin to slave labour and human trafficking, but this is still the first actual fatality. It is therefore a sad milestone in the history of Finnish greed.

Most of the berry pickers are poor residents of rural areas, and many of them are illiterate. Even a small additional income is significant for them.

However, there is no guarantee of success, and many are likely to return home in even greater distress than before.

The Thai pickers pay for everything themselves: a fee to the agent who recruited them, the visa, the flight tickets, travel insurance, lodging, food, phone calls, and transport. They even have to pay for the buckets and the picking devices.

In 2008, when the wild berry crop was disappointing, more than half returned home owing money.

But still, it is allowed to go on.

When you invite a guest, he needs to be taken care of.

Thai pickers are invited to Finland by a handful of companies.

The pickers get about two hours of training, and then they are sent into the forest.

If a picker were to have an employment contract with the company that signed the visa invitation, the work would have to take place under the supervision of the employer.

Now the responsibility is with the pickers themselves.

If they collapse in an arctic wilderness far from home, it’s their own fault.

In Sweden, the pickers have employment contracts, but even there they are blatantly exploited.

This is evidenced by riots that broke out this summer.

It is the lot of the impoverished to be poor.

When will shops start selling fair trade berries from Finland?

If not, I might choke on my cloudberries.

hs.fi

I saw a doc on this last week. Did you post it, Middy? It's on youtube somewhere.

Would this be worse than the treatment Burmese workers receive in Thailand, I wonder?


Chickens coming home etc. My heart bleeds.

Originally Posted by FlyFree

Would this be worse than the treatment Burmese workers receive in Thailand, I wonder? Chickens coming home etc. My heart bleeds.

Do you think a poor rural Thai that has to resort to this kind of employment has Burmese employees he can abuse?

^And how would his culture have primed him to treat the workers if he had the luck to have had money?

Thinking is hard work eh?

Yawn.

^
People from western countries tend to treat foreign berry pickers like shit. So you, being a westerner are just as guilty I guess and deserve any misfortunes that come your way. Good logic you have there.

Yawn

Thats it. No more Finnish berries for me

Originally Posted by FlyFree

Would this be worse than the treatment Burmese workers receive in Thailand, I wonder? Chickens coming home etc. My heart bleeds.

Idiot.

Berry pickers anywhere are treated like crap. Most of the berry growers in BC are East Indians and many hire cheap labour from South America. None of them speaks English so it must be a lot of fun. As for the Thai pickers, they are ripped off by the Thai agents who come to round them up; they charge exorbitant fees for the job-finding, travel, housing costs, etc and confiscate their passports/papers on arrival. The berry cos are/were unaware of this.

Originally Posted by pickel

Originally Posted by FlyFree

Would this be worse than the treatment Burmese workers receive in Thailand, I wonder? Chickens coming home etc. My heart bleeds.

Do you think a poor rural Thai that has to resort to this kind of employment has Burmese employees he can abuse?

Probably. No pay, a shack and a bowl of rice every day. If the Burmese ask for money, out comes the machete. Seen this mostly with construction companies, but I'm sure it happens everywhere.

Originally Posted by Jet Gorgon

Probably. No pay, a shack and a bowl of rice every day. If the Burmese ask for money, out comes the machete. Seen this mostly with construction companies, but I'm sure it happens everywhere.

Do you think the berry picker that died had Burmese employees he abused Jet?

Originally Posted by pickel

Originally Posted by Jet Gorgon

Probably. No pay, a shack and a bowl of rice every day. If the Burmese ask for money, out comes the machete. Seen this mostly with construction companies, but I'm sure it happens everywhere.

Do you think the berry picker that died had Burmese employees he abused Jet?

Dunno. Did he say? These folks go over with dreams of making gobs of money. Just capitalists at heart, so he likely had a Burmese slave or two. You can't prove it either way, so give up your feeble argument.

Originally Posted by Jet Gorgon

so he likely had a Burmese slave or two

Idiot.

^ You know everything? Like I said to Picks, you have no proof either.

Are you really that much of an idiot Jet, or do you just play one on TD?

^ Take your blinkers off. Who better to enslave refugees than poor families who need an extra pair of hands to work the rice paddies? A couple sneak across the border with no papers...sure, many are picked up by traffickers, who probably pay Bt100 to the poor Thais who turned them in. Next you'll deny that poor Thais don't sell their kids to traffickers either. What planet do you people live on?

Thailand is a source, transit, and destination country for men, women, and children trafficked for the purposes of forced labor and commercial sexual exploitation. Thailand’s relative prosperity attracts migrants from neighboring countries and from as far away as Russia and Fiji who flee conditions of poverty and, in the case of Burma, military repression. Significant illegal migration to Thailand presents traffickers with opportunities to force, coerce, or defraud undocumented migrants into involuntary servitude or sexual exploitation. Following migration to Thailand, men, women, and children, primarily from Burma, are trafficked for forced labor in fishing-related industries, factories, agriculture, construction, domestic work, and begging.

Human Trafficking & Modern-day Slavery in Thailand